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The Thief And The Cobbler
Original= The Thief And The Cobbler director = Richard Williams producer = Richard Williams, Imogen Sutton writer = Richard Williams, Margaret French starring = Vincent Price, Sara Crowe, Anthony Quayle music = David Burman, Peter Shade, David Cullen cinematography = John Leatherbarrow editor = Peter Bond studio = Richard Williams Productions release = May 15, 1992 (Workprint) time = 91 minutes language = English budget = $28 million gross = $669,276 |-|The Princess And The Cobbler= The Princess And The Cobbler starring = Vincent Price, Steve Lively, Bobbi Page, Ed E. Carroll, Clive Revill music = Robert Folk distributor = Majestic Films studio = Allied Filmmakers release = September 23, 1993 language = English |-|Arabian Knight= Arabian Knight starring = Vincent Price, Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Beals, Jonathan Winters, Clive Revill music = Robert Folk distributor = Miramax release = August 25, 1995 language = English “The Thief and the Cobbler” is a British-American-Canadian animated film directed, co-written and co-produced by Canadian animator Richard Williams. The film is known for its long, troubled history; due to independent funding and ambitiously complex animation, The Thief and the Cobbler was in and out of production for over three decades. It was finally placed into full production in 1988 when Warner Bros. Pictures agreed to finance and distribute the film. Negotiations broke down when production went over budget and behind schedule. Warner Bros. pulled out and a completion bond company assumed control of the film. The film was re-edited and re-structured by producer Fred Calvert without Williams' involvement, and released by Allied Filmmakers in Australia and South Africa as The Princess and the Cobbler in 1993; two years later, Miramax Films, at the time a subsidiary of Disney, released an even more heavily edited version of the film in North America under the title Arabian Knight. With The Thief and the Cobbler being in and out of production from 1964 to 1995, a total of 31 years, it surpasses the 20-year Guinness record previously held by Tiefland (1954). This was, upon the release, the last film of Kenneth Williams, who died in 1988; Sir Anthony Quayle, who died in 1989; and Vincent Price, who died in 1993, a month after the film's release. This is also, to date, the final film to feature Stanley Baxter. Plot The film starts with the narrator talking about a prosperous city by the name of the Golden City, ruled by King Nod and protected by three golden balls atop its tallest minaret. According to a prophecy, the city would fall to a race of warlike, one-eyed monsters, who were known as the “One-Eyes", should remove those golden balls and could only be saved by "the simplest soul with the smallest and simplest of things". In the town there was a good-hearted cobbler Tack, named for a pair of tacks held in his mouth and a nameless, unsuccessful yet persistent thief. Tack is sleeping inside the house. The thief sneaks into the house. While all of this happens, Zigzag, King Nod's Grand Vizier, does an entrance. The thief and Tack start to fight and stumble outside, causing Tack’s tacks to fall. Zigzag steps on one of the tacks. He orders Tack to be arrested in the palace while the thief escapes. Tack is brought to the palace before King Nod and his daughter, Princess Yum-Yum. Before Zigzag convinces King Nod to have Tack executed by beheading, Yum-Yum saves Tack by breaking one of her shoes and ordering him to fix it. During the repairs, Tack and Yum-Yum become increasingly attracted to each other, much to the jealousy of Zigzag, who starts plotting to take over the kingdom by marrying the princess. Meanwhile, the thief notices the golden balls that are atop the minaret. He decides to steal them. Then, the thief also steals the repaired shoe from Tack after breaking into the palace through a gutter, which prompts the cobbler to chase him through the palace. Upon retrieving the shoe, Tack bumps into Zigzag, who notices the shoe is fixed. Zigzag then imprisons Tack in a dungeon. Then in next morning, Nod visions of the Golden City's destruction by the One-Eyes. While Zigzag tries to convince Nod of all the kingdom's security, the thief steals the balls after several failed attempts, only to lose them to Zigzag's minions. During the ensuing panic, Tack then escapes from his cell using his cobbling tools. Nod notices the balls' disappearance when a wounded soldier warned them of the invading One-Eyes. Zigzag attempts to use the stolen balls so he can blackmail the king into letting him marry Yum-Yum. When Nod dismisses him, Zigzag defects to the One-Eyes. He gives them the balls instead. Then, Nod sends Yum-Yum, her nurse and Tack to ask help from a "mad and holy old witch" who is in the desert. They are secretly followed by the thief, who hears of treasures on the journey but fails in stealing any of them. Then in the desert, they met a group of dimwitted brigands, who are led by Chief Roofless, that Yum-Yum recruits as her bodyguards. Tack and Yum-Yum then reach the hand-shaped tower where the witch lived, and, after the witch kills herself, learn that Tack is prophesied to save the Golden City. The witch also starts to say a riddle: "Attack, attack, attack! A tack, see? But it's what you do with what you've got!" before destroying the tower with a storm cloud. Tack and Yum-Yum then return to the Golden City to find the One-Eyes' war machine approaching. Remembering the witch's riddle, Tack shoots a single tack into the midst, sparking a Goldberg-esque chain reaction that can destroy the entire One-Eye army. Zigzag tries to escape, but he steps on a tack which leads to him falling inside to a pit where he is eaten alive by alligators and his fat and lazy vulture, Phido. The thief, avoiding a bunch of deathtraps, steals the golden balls from the machine, only to have them taken from him by Tack. With all peace restored and the prophecy fulfilled, the city celebrates as Tack and Yum-Yum start marry. The entire golden city zooms out. Then, the golden “The End” text fades in. The thief walks in and steals the letters of the text. He then steals the film. He then walks away and the film ends. Alternate versions The Princess and the Cobbler (1993, Allied Filmmakers): The Allied Filmmakers version is drastically different from Williams's workprint. Four musical numbers have been added; the film originally had none. Many scenes have been cut: These primarily consist of scenes involving the thief, most notably his attempted theft of an emerald and his subsequent evasion of capital punishment for it (though many of these scenes appear in the credits), and the subplot wherein Zigzag tries to feed Tack to Phido. Also removed are any references to the maiden from Mombassa, whom Zigzag gives to King Nod as a "plaything" in the workprint. Tack, almost mute in the workprint, speaks several times and narrates most scenes in past tense; the workprint had narration only in the beginning by a voice-over. Some subplots have been added; in one, Yum-Yum is tired of living a life of "regal splendor", and wishes to prove her worth to her father. Another subplot sees the nurse initially disliking Tack, and scolding Yum-Yum for harboring romantic feelings for him, but warming to him later on. Arabian Knight (1995, Miramax): The Miramax version includes all changes made in the Allied Filmmakers cut. In addition, several previously mute characters are given voices including Phido and the alligators, most notably the thief, who narrates over all of his scenes in the form of an inner monologue. The Golden City is now referred to as Baghdad. Most scenes featuring the Mighty One-Eye's slave women in detail have been removed, although he can still be seen sitting on them. The sequence featuring the witch has been almost entirely removed, as is most of the climactic battle sequence, which had already been greatly shortened in the Allied cut. One-Eye's death is cut, though he can be heard crying "My machine!" as the war machine burns, whereupon he presumably burns with it. The Recobbled Cut (2006, 2007, 2013): Garrett Gilchrist's fan restorations mostly follow Richard Williams's workprint very closely, at least in their intent, using most of its original audio track and editing structure. In order to present a more complete film, Gilchrist added additional music (some from the released versions) and sound effects, and also included finished footage that does not appear in a finished state in the workprint, whether taken from the released versions or from other rare sources. Most of the story changes made by Fred Calvert and Miramax are not present, but it does include a few minor Calvert-only scenes or alterations, either as a side effect of using Calvert's footage as replacements for unfinished scenes in the workprint or because Gilchrist felt these scenes were useful to the plot. For this reason, Gilchrist does not refer to his edit as a "Director's Cut." Trivia *According to Richard Williams, Sean Connery was going to record Tack's one line, but never showed up at the studio, so the line was instead performed by a friend of his wife's. However, Connery's name remains credited in the end credits of the "Recobbled Cut" version. *While Yum-Yum's dialogue was mostly re-voiced by Bobbi Page for the Allied Filmmakers version, one line of Crowe's dialogue is retained when Yum-Yum throws her pear at Zigzag in disgust during the polo game. *In both of the 1992 workprints, the thief is heard making short grunts/wheezes in a few scenes – though not as many as in the Allied Filmmakers version. It is unclear who provided these sounds, but it is known that Carroll did the additional ones for the Allied Filmmakers version. *Although Quayle's voice was mostly re-dubbed by Revill in the re-edited versions of the film by Allied Filmmakers and Miramax, Quayle's uncredited voice can still be heard for an entire scene when King Nod gives a speech to his subjects. *Sims' voice for the Witch was mostly re-dubbed by Marshall, but a few lines spoken by Sims were retained when she first fully materializes and when she receives her chest of money all the way up to the part when she's in a basket lighting a match to the fumes. *Hilary Pritchard was initially cast as Yum-Yum and is listed in a 1989 Cannes brochure. By the time of the 1992 workprints she had been replaced by Sara Crowe. *Similarly, Miriam Margolyes was initially billed as the Maiden from Mombassa, but the workprint features co-writer Margaret French as the Maiden. Production In 1964, Richard Williams, a Canadian animator living in the United Kingdom, was running an animation studio assigned to animate commercials and special sequences for live-action films. Williams illustrated a series of books by Idries Shah,9 which collected the tales of Mulla Nasruddin.1 Nasruddin was a philosophical yet "wise fool" of Near Eastern folklore. Williams began development work on a film based on the stories, with Shah and his family championing production.110 Idries Shah demanded 50% of the profits from the film, and Idries Shah's sister Amina Shah, who had done some of the translations for the Nasrudin book, claimed that she owned the stories.911 Production took place at Richard Williams Productions in Soho Square, London. An early reference to the project came in the 1968 International Film Guide, which noted that Williams was about to begin work on "the first of several films based on the stories featuring Mulla Nasruddin."1 Williams took on television and feature-film title projects in order to fund his project, and work on his film progressed slowly. Williams hired legendary Warner Bros. animator Ken Harris as a chief animator on the project,10 which was then entitled The Amazing Nasrudin. Designer Roy Naisbitt was hired to design backgrounds for the film,10 and promotional art showed intricate Indian and Persian designs.112 In 1970, the project was re-titled The Majestic Fool. For the first time, a potential distributor for the independent film was mentioned: British Lion Film Corporation. The International Film Guide noted that the Williams Studio's staff had increased to forty people for the production of the feature.1 Williams gained further attention when he and the studio produced a TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol for Chuck Jones, which won the studio an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Dialogue tracks for the film, now being referred to as just Nasrudin, were recorded at this time. Actor Vincent Price was hired to perform the voice of the villain, Anwar (later renamed "Zigzag"),1 originally assigned to Kenneth Williams. Sir Anthony Quayle was cast as King Nod. Price was hired to make the villain more enjoyable for Williams, as he was a great fan of Vincent Price's work and ZigZag was based on two people Williams hated.13 By 1972, Williams and the studio had animated around three hours of footage for Nasrudin, according to composer Howard Blake. Blake insisted to Williams that while he thought the footage was excellent, he needed to structure the film and his footage into a three-act plot.10 The Shah family had a bookkeeper that wasn't keeping track of the studio's accounting, so Williams felt that producer Omar Shah had been embezzling financing from the studio for his own purposes.10 As a result, Williams had a falling-out with the Shah family. Paramount withdrew a deal that they'd been negotiating.11 Williams was forced to abandon Nasrudin, as the Shah family took the rights of Williams' illustrations. However the Shah family allowed Williams to keep characters he designed for the books and the movie, including a thief character that was Williams' favorite.10 Williams commissioned a new script from Howard Blake, he wrote a treatment called Tin Tack in 1973. Blake's treatment incorporated a clumsy cobbler named Tack and retained Williams' thief character from Nasrudin.10 While the story's focus and tone was shifted and simplified, Williams' characters from Nasrudin, including a sleepy king and an evil vizier originally named Anwar, all moved over to Tin Tack. Many scenes that did not include Nasrudin himself were also retained.1 Throughout the 1970s, Williams would further re-write the script with Margaret French, his wife at the time.10 Williams later began promising his new film as a "100 minute Panavision animated epic feature film with a hand-drawn cast of thousands."1 The characters were renamed at this point. Zigzag speaks mostly in rhyme throughout the entire film, while the other characters -with the exception of the Thief and Tack who are mute- speak normally. Richard Williams stated that he did not intend to follow "the Disney route" with his film. He went on to state that the film would be "the first animated film with a real plot that locks together like a detective story at the end," and that, with its two mute main characters, Thief was essentially "a silent movie with a lot of sound."1 Silent comedies, like films from Charlie Chaplin and Harry Langdon, were already an inspiration on Nasrudin and carried over to the new film. Tack was modeled after said silent film stars.10 British illustrator Errol Le Cain created inspirational paintings and backgrounds, setting the style for the film.15 During the decades that the film was being made, the characters were redesigned several times, and scenes were reanimated. The character designs are a combination of UPA and Disney styles.39 Test animation of Princess Yum-Yum, as featured in the released versions, was traced from the live-action film Muqaddar Ka Sikandar16 – her design was slightly changed later into production.17 In Williams' early drafts, the climax included a final battle with Zigzag after the collapse of the War Machine, where he conjures a larger-than-life Oriental dragon only for Tack to reveal it to be nothing more than an inflatable balloon. Although there were some production designs of the scene with the Oriental dragon, it was never made, as it was found to be too difficult to animate.18 In 1974, a recession forced the studio to focus primarily on various TV commercial, TV special, and feature film title assignments, leaving Williams' movie to be worked on as a side project.10 Because Williams had no money to have a full team working on the film, and due to the film being a "giant epic", production dragged for decades.14 Ken Harris was still the chief animator on the film, as he had been since Nasrudin, and Williams would assign him sequences while he was supervising production on commercials.10 To save money, scenes were kept in pencil stage without putting it into colour, as advised by Richard Purdum: "Work on paper! Don’t put it in colour. Don’t spend on special effects. Don’t do camera-work, tracing or painting... just do the rough drawings!"19 Williams was planning to later finish these sequences when the financing would come in. Williams was learning the art of animation himself during the production of his film, before The Thief his animation during the 1960s typically featured stylized designs in the vein of UPA animated shorts. Williams hired veteran animators from the golden age of animation, such as Art Babbitt, Emery Hawkins and Grim Natwick to work in his studio in London and help teach him and his staff:1320 Williams learned also from Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Ken Anderson at Disney, to whom he made yearly visits.21 Williams would later pass their knowledge to the new generation of animators.2210 Williams also allowed animators like Natwick and Babbitt to work on the studio assignments, such as the 1977 feature Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure. The Mad Holy Old Witch was designed as a caricature of animator Grim Natwick,23 by whom she was animated. After Natwick died, Williams would animate the Witch himself. As years passed, the project became more ambitious. Williams said that "the idea is to make the best animated film that has ever been made – there really is no reason why not."14 Williams envisioned the film to feature very detailed and complex animation, the likes he thought no other studio would attempt to achieve.391210 Additionally, much of the film's animation would be photographed "on ones", meaning that the animation runs at full 24 frames per second, as opposed to the more common animation "on twos" in twelve frames per second.3911 In 1978, a Saudi Arabian prince, Mohammed bin Faisal Al Saud, became interested in The Thief and agreed to fund a ten-minute test sequence, with the budget of $100,000. Williams chose the complex, penultimate sequence of the Thief in the War Machine for the test. The studio missed two deadlines, and the scene was completed in the end of 1979 for $250,000. Faisal, despite his positive impression of the finished scene,11 backed out of the production because of missed deadlines and budgetary overruns.910 In the 1980s, Williams put together a 20-minute sample reel of The Thief, which he showed to Milt Kahl, friend and one of Williams' animation mentors, at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County.24 Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz even worked with Williams to attempt to get financing in the mid-1980s. Kurtz later left The Thief. In 1986, Williams met producer Jake Eberts, who began funding the production through his Allied Filmmakers company and eventually provided US$10 million of the film's $28 million budget.125 Allied's distribution and sales partner, Majestic Films, began promoting the film in industry trades, under the working title Once.... At this time, Eberts encouraged Williams to make changes to the script. A subplot involving the characters of Princess Mee-Mee, Yum-Yum's twin sister played by Catherine Schell, and the Prince Bubba, who had been turned into an ogre, and was played by Thick Wilson.17 Both characters were deleted and some of Grim Natwick's animation of the Witch had to be discarded. Also deleted was Ken Harris' sequence of a Brigand dreaming of a Biblical temptress.1 Steven Spielberg saw the footage of The Thief and was impressed enough that he, with film director Robert Zemeckis, asked Williams to direct the animation of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.391118 Williams agreed in order to get financing for The Thief and the Cobbler and get it finally finished. Roger Rabbit was released in 1988, and became a blockbuster. Williams won two Oscars for his animation and contributions to the visual effects. Although Roger Rabbit ran over-budget before animation production began, the success of the film proved that Williams could work within a studio structure and turn out high-quality animation on time and within budget.1 Disney and Spielberg told Williams that in return for doing Roger Rabbit, they would help distribute his film.26 This plan did not come to pass. Disney began to put their attention more in its own feature animation, while Spielberg instead opened a rival feature animation studio in London. Because of his success, Williams and Warner Bros. negotiated a funding and a distribution deal for The Thief and the Cobbler, which included a $25 million marketing budget.10 Williams' current wife, Imogen Sutton, suggested him to finance The Thief with European backers, citing his appreciation of foreign films. Richard insisted he could produce the film with a major studio.27 Williams and Warners signed a negative pickup deal in late 1988, and Williams also got some financial aid from Japanese investors.911 Williams himself later stated, "In hindsight we should have just gone to Europe, take another five years, made it on our own, and then go to a distributor and get people who find it as a novelty."28 With the new funding, the film finally got into full production in 1989. Williams scoured the art schools of Europe and Canada to find talented artists.18 It was at this point, with almost all of the original animators either dead or having long since moved on to other projects, that full-scale production on the film began, mostly with a new, younger team of animators, including Williams's own son Alexander Williams. In a 1988 interview with Jerry Beck, Williams stated that he had two and a half hours of pencil tests for Thief and that he had not storyboarded the film as he found such a method too controlling.1 Vincent Price originally recorded his dialogue from 1967 to 1973, a period of 6 years. Williams recorded further dialogue with Price for the 1990 production, 16 years later, but Price's age and illness meant some lines remained unfinished. Williams had before experimented with shots animated by hand to move in three dimensions with characters, including several shots in Roger Rabbit's opening sequence. With The Thief, Williams began planning several sequences to feature a greater use of this animation technique, including Tack and the Thief's palace chase – which was achieved without computer-generated imagery. According to rumors, Williams approached The Thief with a live-action point of view coming off of Roger Rabbit. Williams was creating extra footage and extending sequences to trim down later and that he would have edited down the workprint he later assembled.1029 Warner Bros. had also signed a deal with The Completion Bond Company to ensure the studio would be given a finished film, if not they would finish The Thief under their management.10 Williams, dedicated but pressured, was taking his time to ensure sequences would look perfect. Animators were working overtime, sometimes sixty hours a week required, to get the film done. While Williams encouraged the best out of people, discipline was harsh and animators were frequently fired.10 "He fired hundreds of people. There's a list as long as your arm of people fired by Dick. It was a regular event." cameraman John Leatherbarrow recalls, "There was one guy who got fired on the doorstep." Williams was just as hard on himself: "He was the first person in the morning and the last one out at night," recalls animator Roger Vizard.18 Funders pressured Williams to make finished scenes of the main characters for a marketing trailer. The final designs were made for the characters at this time. The film was not finished by a 1991 deadline that Warner originally imposed upon Williams;18 the film had approximately 10 to 15 minutes of screen time to complete, which at Williams's rate was estimated to take "a tight six months" or longer.912 From Warner Bros.' perspective, the animation department at the studio had put their enthusiasm towards high-quality television animation but had little confidence towards backing feature animation. Warner Bros. had already released The Nutcracker Prince, a Canadian-produced animated feature, in 1990 to almost no promotion. Warner's head of animation Jean MacCurdy didn't know anything about animation, as she admitted to an artist that had worked for Williams while she was seeing footage of The Thief.10 Another animator working in Warner Bros. salvaged almost 40 minutes of 35mm dailies footage from MacCurdy's trash.30 Meanwhile, Walt Disney Feature Animation had begun work on Aladdin, a film which bore striking resemblances in story, style and character to The Thief and the Cobbler; for example, the character Zigzag from Thief shares many physical characteristics with both Aladdin's villain, Jafar, and its Genie, as animated by Williams Studio alumnus Andreas Deja and Eric Goldberg.3132 The Completion Bond Company asked television animation producer Fred Calvert to do a detailed analysis of the production status.12 He traveled to Williams's London studio several times to check on the progress of the film, and his conclusion was that Williams was "woefully behind schedule and way over budget."1 Williams had a script, according to Calvert, but "he wasn't following it faithfully." People from the Completion Bond Company, and Calvert, were visiting the studio more often towards the end. Williams was giving dailies of sequences that were finished or scrapped since the 1980s, hoping to give an indication of progress to Warner Bros.10 Williams was asked to show the investors a rough copy of the film with the remaining scenes filled in with storyboards in order to establish the film's narrative.918 Williams had avoided storyboards up to this point, but within two weeks he had done what the investors had asked.18 Williams made a workprint which combined finished footage, pencil tests, storyboards, and movements from the symphonic suite, Scheherazade, to cover the 10–15 minutes left to finish.12 Animators found out that they had completed more than enough footage for an 85-minute feature, but they had yet to finish certain vital sequences involving the central story.10 In May 13, 1992, this rough version of the film was shown to Warner Bros., and was not well received. During the screening, the penultimate reel of the film was missing, which did not help matters.27 The studio lost confidence and backed out of the project. The Completion Bond Company seized control of the film, ousting Williams from the project.918 Jake Eberts, who at this point was an executive producer, also abandoned the project.12 Additionally, according to Richard Williams himself, the production had lost a source of funding when Japanese investors pulled out due to the recession following the Japanese asset price bubble.33 Fans cite this decision as an example of a trend of animated films being tampered with by studio executives.34 Sue Shakespeare of Creative Capers Entertainment had previously offered to solve story problems with Richard Williams, suggested to bring in Terry Gilliam to consult, and proposed to allow Williams to finish the film under her supervision. Williams reportedly agreed to Shakespeare's proposal, but her bid was ultimately rejected by the Completion Bond Company in favor of a cheaper one by Fred Calvert.35 Calvert was assigned by the Completion Bond Company to finish the film as cheaply and quickly as possible. "I really didn't want to do it," Calvert said, "but if I didn't do it, it would have been given off to the lowest bidder. I took it as a way to try and preserve something and at least get the thing on the screen and let it be seen."25 It took Calvert 18 months to finish the film.18 It was turned into a Disney-type musical.363738 The new scenes were produced on a much lower budget, with the animation being produced by freelance animators in Los Angeles and former Williams animators working with Neil Boyle at Premier Films in London. Sullivan Bluth Studios animated the first song sequence, "She Is More", and Kroyer Films the second, "Am I Feeling Love?".118 The ink and paint work was subcontracted to Wang Film Productions in Taiwan and its division Thai Wang Film Productions in Thailand, as well as Varga Studio in Hungary. Approximately 18 minutes of completed animation were cut by Calvert, due to the repetitive nature of the scenes.1 Calvert said "We hated to see all this beautiful animation hit the cutting room floor, but that was the only way we could make a story out of it. He Williams was kind of Rube Goldberg-ing his way through. I don't think he was able to step back and look at the whole thing as a story. He's an incredible animator, though. Incredible. One of the biggest problems we had was trying our desperate best, where we had brand new footage, to come up to the level of quality that he had set."1